A summary of their talk by the speaker

A Soul and a Landscape. Rosalía´s Life and poetry

Ana Rodríguez Fischer

The first conference will focus on the poetry of Rosalía de Castro (including both, the one written in Galician and in Castilian) analyzing its main themes. A poetry that with time built a very personal sensibility and poetic world in agreement with how the author progressively gives shape and refines her view, at the same time as she forges an unmistakable poetic language. We will also review Rosalías' different and successive image and interpretations: the "romantic" -a sensible poet, sweet, fragile, melancholic and almost mourning: "a santiña"- and the "social -which includes her nationalistic push-. I will highlight the Rosalian legacy in the poets that shortly after would contribute to a decisive renovation of Spanish lyrics (Unamuno, Antonio Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez), and will also review the writers-travelers (Azorín, Eugenio d’Ors, C. J. Cela, Álvaro Cunqueiro, Cees Nooteboom) who while traveling along the Galician region evoke and meditate on the memory of the writer, incorporating to their chronicle the poetry of the landscape forged by Rosalía.

The works in prose of Rosalía de Castro: from the Sugary Newspaper Serial to Irony and Satire

Ana Rodríguez Fischer

The second conference devoted to the prose work of Rosalía de Castro (tales, pieces of traditions and novels), reviewing the drastic change we can see from La hija del mar (1859) and Flavio (1861) to the strange and protean novel El caballero de las botas azules (1867), so Hoffmannian and Cervantian, and so scarcely understood. We will have a special attention now for the feminine characters and the problematic of the woman condition (and for the feminist allegations of the author), as well as for the social satire and the utopian projection of this other strange gentleman or "new man", mocking and sarcastic, who launches a proclamation of freedom at the dawn of the revolution of 1868.